Dr Diego Ruiz-Hern叩ndez, Senior Lecturer at Sheffield University Management School is working, together with Professor Amaya Erro-Garc辿s from the Universidad P炭blica de Navarra (UPNA) and Jes炭s Mar鱈a Pinar-P辿rez from CUNEF Universidad, in a University-Enterprise project in collaboration with Elkarkide, a Special Employment Centre (CEE) in Pamplona, Spain. Elkarkides main economic activity lies in the door-to-door delivery of brochures, publicity materials, and other leaflets in the city of Pamplona and other villages in the surrounding area.
In Spain, Special Employment Centres enjoy special taxation and financial support from local governments. The main requisite for a CEE is that at least 80% of their staff must have a disability (33% or more according to Spanish law). In the case of Elkarkide, employees with a disability make up 90% of their workforce, suffering from serious mental health problems.
The group lead by Dr Ruiz-Hern叩ndez is working on a thorough revision of Elkarkides distribution and publicity delivery process, expecting to attain significant increases in productivity, while considering the special characteristics of the postal workers working in Elkarkide. In the words of Marcos Resano, Elkarkides manager, we must "highlight the impact that this project has for our organisations sustainability, an impact that translates also into social impact, as Elkarkides purpose is the inclusion of people with serious mental illnesses."
To celebrate the first year of this project and to share the results obtained so far by the research team, on 22 November Dr Ruiz-Hern叩ndez presented the talk Districting and multi-operator routing problems in urban areas with replenishment stops at the UPNA. This presentation was followed by a working meeting with Elkarkides management team (Marcos Resano, Gonzalo Mar鱈n and Ines Giron辿s). During this meeting, the interdisciplinary team revised the current state of the project and discussed the steps necessary to complete by September next year.